Shorting The Grid

"Shorting the Grid" describes how closed meetings, arcane auction rules, and five-minute planning horizons will topple the reliability of our electric grid. Hopeful speeches will not keep the lights on.

"Shorting the Grid" describes how closed meetings, arcane auction rules, and five-minute planning horizons will topple the reliability of our electric grid. Hopeful speeches will not keep the lights on.

There’s probably a good chance that you’ve turned on your television, computer, or an appliance without giving much thought about the electric grid. But when there’s a power outage, it’s a different story. Suddenly, you’re asking yourself questions such as: What is the electric grid and who owns it? Who controls the grid and how is it controlled? What causes a grid blackout? What is the future of the grid? William L. Thompson, who retired from Dominion Virginia Power after thirty-eight years in the electric business, answers those questions and many more in this book for anyone curious about the electric grid and how it works. In plain, simple language, he reveals what goes on behind the scenes at grid control centers across the country. He also explains how electricity is generated through renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. He also examines the causes behind the largest blackout in United States history and how global warming and technological developments could permanently change Living on the Grid.

The history of the grid, the world's largest interconnected power machine that is North America's electricity infrastructure. The North American power grid has been called the world's largest machine. The grid connects nearly every living soul on the continent; Americans rely utterly on the miracle of electrification. In this book, Julie Cohn tells the history of the grid, from early linkages in the 1890s through the grid's maturity as a networked infrastructure in the 1980s. She focuses on the strategies and technologies used to control power on the grid—in fact made up of four major networks of interconnected power systems—paying particular attention to the work of engineers and system operators who handled the everyday operations. To do so, she consulted sources that range from the pages of historical trade journals to corporate archives to the papers of her father, Nathan Cohn, who worked in the industry from 1927 to 1989—roughly the period of key power control innovations across North America. Cohn investigates major challenges and major breakthroughs but also the hidden aspects of our electricity infrastructure, both technical and human. She describes the origins of the grid and the growth of interconnection; emerging control issues, including difficulties in matching generation and demand on linked systems; collaboration and competition against the backdrop of economic depression and government infrastructure investment; the effects of World War II on electrification; postwar plans for a coast-to-coast grid; the northeast blackout of 1965 and the East-West closure of 1967; and renewed efforts at achieving stability and reliability after those two events.

The never-before-told story of the grid that ate Manhattan

____________________ This ground-breaking book from award-winning author MATT WATKINSON reveals the fundamental, inseparable elements behind the success of every business. The Grid provides the mental scaffolding to help you: · Evaluate and refine product and service ideas · Reduce risk by considering the broader impact of strategic decisions · Identify the root causes of business challenges · Anticipate the impact of changes in the market and turn them to your advantage · Collaborate more effectively across teams Combining practical guidance with real-world examples, The Grid will bring clarity and confidence to your business decision-making. ____________________ 'The Grid provides you with a simple way to look at the complex system which is your business. With the possible exception of Warren Buffett, everyone needs to read this book.' RORY SUTHERLAND, VICE CHAIRMAN, OGILVY GROUP 'The Grid provides a systematic framework for looking at virtually all the critical aspects of your business, and maybe more valuable, at how each affects the others. It'll be a rare reader who doesn't come away with fresh, useful insights into his or her enterprise.' WALTER KEICHEL III, author of The Lords of Strategy 'Matt Watkinson distils strategic know-how into nine ingenious perspectives and, with the use of clever examples, shows us how to apply this technique of thinking to any business problem or market opportunity. An extraordinarily powerful book.' DR JULES GODDARD, author of Uncommon Sense, Common Nonsense 'The Grid presents a unique, joined up approach to decision-making, revealing both the holistic nature of business and all the key elements a business must consider. I can safely say that if you only read one business book in your life it should be The Grid.' PHILIP ROWLEY, Chief Finance Officer, Sony Pictures Entertainment

The grid has long been an invaluable tool for creating order out of chaos for designers of all kinds—from city planners to architects to typesetters and graphic artists. In recent years, web designers, too, have come to discover the remarkable power that grid-based design can afford in creating intuitive, immersive, and beautiful user experiences. Ordering Disorder delivers a definitive take on grids and the Web. It provides both the big ideas and the brass-tacks techniques of grid-based design. Readers are sure to come away with a keen understanding of the power of grids, as well as the design tools needed to implement them for the World Wide Web. Khoi Vinh is internationally recognized for bringing the tried-and-true principles of the typographic grid to the World Wide Web. He is the former Design Director for NYTimes.com, where he consolidated his reputation for superior user experience design. He writes and lectures widely on design, technology, and culture, and has published the popular blog Subtraction.com for over a decade. More information at grids.subtraction.com

WHAT IS THE STORY GRID? The Story Grid is a tool developed by editor Shawn Coyne to analyze stories and provide helpful editorial comments. It's like a CT Scan that takes a photo of the global story and tells the editor or writer what is working, what is not, and what must be done to make what works better and fix what's not. The Story Grid breaks down the component parts of stories to identify the problems. And finding the problems in a story is almost as difficult as the writing of the story itself (maybe even more difficult). The Story Grid is a tool with many applications: 1. It will tell a writer if a Story ?works? or ?doesn't work. 2. It pinpoints story problems but does not emotionally abuse the writer, revealing exactly where a Story (not the person creating the Story'the Story) has failed. 3. It will tell the writer the specific work necessary to fix that Story's problems. 4. It is a tool to re-envision and resuscitate a seemingly irredeemable pile of paper stuck in an attic drawer. 5. It is a tool that can inspire an original creation.

A nation unprepared : surviving the aftermath of a blackout where tens of millions of people over several states are affected.

Read this book and you will never view reality the same way again! Mainstream science argues that if something can’t be touched, measured, quantified, and duplicated in a laboratory, then it doesn’t exist! According to this worldview, reality is an unconscious, non-personal mass of matter, which leaves no room for the existence of spiritual or unexplained phenomenon. But is that all there really is to reality? Marie D. Jones and Larry Flaxman don’t think so, and after reading this book, neither will you! In The Grid, paranormal investigators and best-selling authors Jones and Flaxman present their theory of the Grid, a divine superstructure that includes multiple levels of existence, the entirety of which make up our reality. Imagine a towering skyscraper with numerous floors, where each floor represents a different “level” of existence. Matter, spirits, angels, ghosts, extraterrestrials, quantum physics, biology, neuroscience, religion, metaphysics—even paranormal studies—all have their place in the Grid. And once you have an understanding of the many floors of the Grid and how they are connected, you will learn all the possible ways you can “take the elevator” to access them, such as developing your psychic abilities, deep meditation, out-of-body experiences, and even the use of psychoactive drugs! Jones and Flaxman will show you how to release the limiting belief that “this is all there is” once and for all by exploring the Grid, expanding your awareness, and empowering your life in the process. Reality, dear friend, will never be the same again.